TREASON: Claus von Stauffenberg and the plot to kill Hitler
In ten episodes, Treason tells the remarkable and true story of Claus von Stauffenberg and the plot to assassinate Hitler. In July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg was 36 years old. He was a brilliant staff officer, regarded by many, including Hitler, as the most brilliant in the German Army. He was a decorated war hero. He had been badly wounded in North Africa, losing his right hand, two fingers of his left hand, and his left eye: he could have sat out the war on a pension. He was married with four children, and his wife was pregnant with their fifth. He had everything to live for – and yet he was prepared to risk all that to try and rid the world of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The gripping narrative follows Claus von Stauffenberg as the Nazis rise to unleash the Second World War across Europe, Claus's increasing disillusionment with the regime, and the process of building an insurrection against Hitler. We will hear about the many attempts on Hitler's life, and the courage and character of those in the German resistance who were prepared to act.
Episodes
Once the coup collapsed, the Nazis outdid themselves in their fury. It remained to be seen who would be caught in their net.
Some conspirators committed suicide. Some managed to escape.
Thousands were rounded up. The Gestapo tortured their victims, placed them on show trials, and hanged them.
At their trials before the Nazi ‘People’s Court’, with nothing left to lose, the July plotters proved remarkably difficult to cow.
...
Once the coup collapsed, Fromm hesitated, then returned to his office, where Stauffenberg, Beck, Olbricht, Mertz and Hoepner were held under guard.
Beck tried to shoot himself. He only succeeded in badly wounding himself, and was later finished off.
Hoepner asked to be sent for a trial, and Fromm agreed.
By now the forces suppressing the coup were approaching. Knowing of the coup preparations, Fromm had done nothing to s...
At about 4 in the afternoon of 20 July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg arrived back in Berlin. He expected the insurrection to be in full swing, and was shocked to learn nothing had been done.
He swung into action, and the first Valkyrie orders went out.
Colonel General Fromm was unwilling to commit himself to the coup while Hitler’s survival remained uncertain. Incensed when he learned Valkyrie orders had been issued wit...
Claus von Stauffenberg took his briefcase bomb to three conferences with Hitler.
On 11 July 1944 he attended a conference in the Berghof, in the Bavarian alps, but generals in the conspiracy ordered him not to go ahead if Himmler was not present. On 15 July he took the bomb to the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia (see episode cover photograph). In a long telephone call the generals were again reluctant to have the bomb det...
With over a million slave workers in Germany, the Nazis feared an uprising. They prepared a plan for the Army to handle any such revolt. Echoing Wagner’s Ring, they called it ‘Operation Valkyrie’. The orders provided an ideal framework for a coup.
In 1943, Claus von Stauffenberg was initiated into this plan. He modified the orders to facilitate a takeover.
He was married, with four children. He felt he could not be a fa...
In February 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl, students calling themselves ‘The White Rose’, were arrested for distributing leaflets calling for peace. The Nazis tried them for treason – and they were executed.
In March 1943, in ‘Operation Flash’, conspirators made several attempts to assassinate Hitler. This culminated when they secreted an armed bomb onto his plane when he took off from Smolensk, in Russia. The failure of...
In November 1939, Georg Elser, acting alone, planted an immense bomb in the Beer Hall cellar in Munich. Using two high-precision clocks, he timed it to explode at the midpoint of Hitler’s annual speech commemorating the Beer Hall Putsch.
Hitler attended as planned, and spoke from the podium just in front of the bomb – but then left early to oversee his planned attack on France.
In April 1940, Hitler rapidly seized Denm...
1938 was the year when the tide of Hitler’s ambition should have broken against widespread international and internal opposition.
Instead, it was the year when his tsunami was unleashed.
By deft manoeuvres, he isolated Austria, and in March incorporated it into the German Reich.
He then turned his attention to Czechoslovakia. The Nazis fomented unrest in the Sudetenland, and Hitler demanded its return to the German Reich...
How did an obscure Austrian idler rise to become the leader of the German Reich? How could a nation as cultured and enlightened as Germany instal the Nazis in government?
And what was the Third Reich regime like?
In 1923, Adolf Hitler was jailed when he attempted an insurrection in Bavaria. His party was banned. On his release, when the party was once more allowed to contest elections, the results were miserable.
But in...
Who was Claus von Stauffenberg? Scion of a great family, poet, cellist, soldier, husband, father – and the man who sought to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
In this episode we trace Claus’s family background, his upbringing, and major influences in his early life – so different from what we might expect from a would-be revolutionary.
He was a child during the First World War, and at the end of that war saw revolutionary acti...
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